


i keep you

by cedricsboyfriend



Series: hedric shorts [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23973622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedricsboyfriend/pseuds/cedricsboyfriend
Summary: another tumblr short based on an au where cedric is a lighthouse keeper and harry is a sailor who was saved because cedric kept the light going.
Relationships: Cedric Diggory/Harry Potter
Series: hedric shorts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688842
Kudos: 52





	i keep you

Cedric woke up.

He blew heavy into his hands as if somehow, his thin fingers could bottle the warmth of his breath as he shivered—the blanket he brought from home, too thin to warm his legs. From beneath, the wooden floorboards creaked and he shuffled across the room, palms clumsy from the cold but still trying to ignite a fire in the stomach of an old metal stove.

When the sun rose, little puffs of smoke drifted from a makeshift chimney sticking out the porthole, and there was a clump of dried moon-penny melting in a pot boiling over the fire. Meanwhile in a makeshift room—built just the other day—Cedric dressed, washed his face and glimpsed at his reflection in a bronze hand-mirror he had nailed to the wall. 

He considered taking the blade his mother had packed him, to clean the hair that patched and shadowed his jaw and chin but after a few seconds, he shook his head.

_Who is there to keep appearances up for?_

And so Cedric let the hair grow another day, ignoring how much it aged his face.

By the time the sun peaked in the middle of the sky and the pot sat cooling on the stove, Cedric had already gotten dirty; his cream sleeves stained with splotches of whale oil, and the dust and grime left on the lighthouse’s lantern rubbed onto his arms. He had gotten used to the sweat and dirt, thinking the labor a small price to pay in order to keep the light going at night. What he could not get used to, however...

A breeze snuck into his collar, brisk against the his damp chest. 

As if being lured by siren call, he set down his metal tools and walked out of the glass room, into its open balcony; staring to the horizon with his arms swinging over the rail, wave and sea foam leaping high as the surf crashed against black jagged rocks around the lighthouse, salt-water spittle catching onto his hands.   
Blue sky. Blue ocean.   
All around him; blue, blue, blue. There was not a cloud in sight. Nothing speckled the unwavering and endless vastness above and beyond him, it simply _beckoned_ to be explored and yet... all he could do is stay. 

Cedric let a sigh pass through his lips. As the water rushed up to the rocks again, the current seemed to lament with him.

He turned and walked back, reaching behind the lantern’s giant shape for it’s handle; the old keeper had instructed him to wind it only twice every two hours, but it wouldn’t hurt to do this much, right?   
From his pocket he took out a compass, winding and winding the lantern until he was certain that it’s beam angled westward, the direction of his home.

Cedric lingered a moment, simply staring, and he wondered whether morning had reached the house shutters yet. If his father sat at the table, reading, or his mother planned to plant new seeds in the flowerbed. 

Something dull ached in his chest. 

But the moment passed, and after he scratched the scruff of his chin, Cedric began to descend back downstairs. There’s only so much time he could spend missing his home—he needed to prepare for another long night.

* * *

Cedric woke up.

As he rose from his bed, thick blankets shawled around him, his muscles screamed in tire. The thickness of each leg twinged as he walked, reaching down toward the stove but before he could even begin ignite the fire, Cedric realized that his two hands could barely stay aloft midair; he was unable to muster enough strength in his sore arms, to smash and spark the two rocks together.

The sun had risen higher in the sky than usual when a kettle of sea-water whistled, boiled on the stove. He had stopped boiling anything other than water a long time ago, when his supply of money-penny began to dwindle. Though he suspected there would be no such thing in this life, Cedric had promised himself that he would save the flowers and make tea only for special occasions and thus his days were a little less comfortable after that fact.

In the little room he had built, surprisingly still held against the tide and winds, Cedric dressed and washed his face. He had nailed a new piece of parchment to the wall and a strung-up piece of charcoal, whittled down to a very thin stub on the side. The parchment indicated two hundred and fifty-six tally marks, though Cedric knew that he had not fully counted all of the days since he had started living here. He had also nailed two notes of his parents writings, the letters they had hidden in his belongings when he first left.

Cedric looked in the mirror, its bronze frame now worn down to a dull metal and he observed that his beard had grown longer again but more ragged. He looked more like a wild-haired poet than a lighthouse keeper, and it made his cheeks sallow, his eyes looking like they dug in into his face.   
The razor was still hooked on the wall, as sharp as it had been when he brought it, but Cedric could not find it in himself to groom just for the waves. Instead, he simply made his way upstairs and walked to the railing of the balcony again, staring deeply into the rock and blue depths below. He had begun to stare longer and longer each day.

But always, _always,_ he would turn back. The wind would whisper him a coward, and he would settle down to begin working on the lantern again.

He didn’t turn it westward today, for he knew it would worsen the ache and guilt that burrowed so deeply inside his chest. It was easier to pretend such things didn’t exist; things other than the sea, the sky and his little world inside the tower. 

It was also easier for Cedric to stop wondering whether his mother or father or anyone wondered what he was doing. It would hurt less than wondering if they missed him at all.

* * *

Cedric woke up. 

He had dozed off in the middle of the night, despite the wind screaming all around him, and jolted with a start; frantically checking the hourglass before he inevitably relaxed. 

Only an hour has passed. There would be enough time to wind the lantern once more.

Easing back into his chair, Cedric scratched at his beard now thick and coarse like an old gentlemen’s, hiding his face in the dim candlelight. _I wonder if Father would surprised to see so much hair._

As if to answer him, the outside of his windows flashed a brilliant white, followed by the rumble of thunder.

Despite himself, Cedric chuckled.   
Bitter.

His mind was dazed and in a blurry state; _why did I wake up?_

It was strange. He thought that he had grown used to the sound of the sea crashing against the lighthouse, that he had grown used to the way the wind howled like a chorus of dogs. 

But, it never howled like this. It never howled like _a person._

Feeling like he had been doused by a spring of cold water, Cedric rushed up to the window trying to peer beyond the veil of darkness and heavy rain. 

In the luminescence of the lighthouse’s lantern, he could make the outline of a small, rickety rowboat against the rocks, thrown lopsided between waves that bent and towered over the seafloor. Inside it, there was a figure that waved his hands wildly, screaming so powerfully that it pierced through the thunderous sounds of the storm above.

Cedric had been instructed to never leave his post; not in the dead of the night and especially not in the middle of the storm. But as he grabbed a roll of wound-up hemp rope from his open trunk, feeling his body seize and throw on a hat and coat over his shoulders—he soon realized that he couldn’t care less about what he was _instructed_ to do.

Swiftly he burst through the lighthouse’s metal door and ran, nearly slipping across the rocks until he hit the wooden dock where his own rowboat stayed, rocking violently in the water. 

“OVER HERE!” he waved a lantern, shouting as loud as he could and realizing—as it rang against the wind and the sleet—that he had forgotten what his own voice had felt like until now, _“COME THIS WAY!”_

With his hands and lantern aloft, Cedric seemed to cut through bellows of thunder and the rowboat paddled toward him, fighting with the waves. So slow and so easily was this raft swept by the riot of the ocean, that Cedric felt his heart drop and rise nearly as raucously; almost unable to bear looking at it directly. Suddenly a gigantic wave rose up, almost twice the size of the boat, rushing toward its side.

_“NO—!”_

Cedric watched in horror as the boat overturned, the figure knocked back into the churning water only twenty feet away from where he stood. Desperate, he scanned the water, swinging his lantern wildly as if its dim light could help but Cedric could not see anything against the darkness of the waves; which seemed to swallow even the lighthouse’s beam. 

“Shit,” he breathed. _“Shit!”_

He set the lantern and rope down, shedding off his coat and hat, and unable to truly believe what he was about to do.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t leave!” a voice gurgled. An arm slapped onto the deck and gripping tightly with its nails until blood ran against the wood, “Don’t leave me!”

Without hesitation, Cedric rushed and pulled the stranger up, catching in his arms a man soaked to his bones–tiny cuts scattered on his face, broken, thin glasses caught by the curve of his ear and eyes barely conscious enough to see as he coughed and shivered; holding onto Cedric’s arms for dear life as the water bogged down his clothes. 

“You’re alright.... You’re alright!” Cedric shouted but the man could scarcely nod. They shuffled across and up the rocks, the rain battering into their bodies and the force of the wind threatening to send both of them to keel. With the man’s arm over his shoulders, Cedric pulled him along, shouting words of encourage and slowly, they made their way toward the warm interior of the lighthouse. 

* * *

Harry woke up.

He was in a bed with a thick set of blankets on top of him. His body ached and he could feel a set of bruises covering his legs and arms but he was unmistakably dry and still alive. 

Though he looked, his bare eyes blurred his surroundings to colours and strange shapes, all he could tell was that he was in a small room with a window that overlooked the sea.

A kettle whistled and blindly, he stumbled toward the stove, body aching, as he lifted the pot away.

“You’re up,” said a voice behind him. Harry spun around. 

“Yes,” he said, squinting at the figure stood at the bottom of a staircase? “Erm.. do you perhaps—”

“Oh! Here,” the man came closer and placed a pair of glasses, pieced together by twine, onto his nose, “I f-... well, _I think,_ I fixed them.”

Harry blinked, readjusted the glasses, and looked at the world around him with a new sharpness to his gaze: first, taking note of the morning light, the wooden room, and then the man in front of him. Tall. Handsome.

Clean-shaven.

"Let's put that down before you hurt yourself," the man said and he took the kettle and placed it aside.

“Thank you...” said Harry said, and as he looked around him, he felt his knees weaken. “Thank you, you saved me... you _saved_ me...”

Cedric, who had not introduced himself yet but would, looked at him surprised.  
He shook his head, “It was only by _your_ strength that I even heard you on the water, I didn't—”

Harry shook his head. He pointed to the ceiling.

“No... it... when the ship went down, I—I just rowed toward the light. I don’t know if the others saw but... the light, it... _you_ saved me.”

Harry grabbed his hands and pressed them tightly, his warm, green eyes a shock to Cedric's senses after having witnessed every shade of blue.

“Thank you,” said Harry, again. _“Thank you.”_

The room was silent save for the rumble of the stove’s lit pot-belly and the sound of the sea lapping across the rocks.

“I-... Let me pour you a cup of something warm,” Cedric said, blinking. He could feel his heart beat, feel something humming light and joyful in his chest, without anything left over for aching. He squeezed Harry's hand back and felt his heart swell. The first time in a while.

“Would you like some tea?”

**Author's Note:**

> it occurs to me that i've been neglected to plug my tumblr after all of these.  
> its cedricsboyfriend.tumblr.com if anyone is interested!


End file.
